BMX XXX (Xbox)

As a man my ears immediately perk up whenever the word “breasts” is mentioned in the midst of a conversation. So you’ll probably understand my excitement when Acclaim informed us that they would be ditching Mirra entirely and in his place, would be adding some big-breasted riders with attitude. Add in a touch of Z-Axis and their breast-physics know-how (just check out Aggressive Inline for further proof) and color me eager.

Then during the development cycle something went wrong. The game lost its sense of direction and instead of being about big-breasted women who have a strange fetish for bicycles; it was about foul-mouthed pimps who loan out their poodles for sex and peanut vendors who feel the urge to tell passersby about their hot salty nutsacks. Thus begat BMX XXX, a game that’s not fun to play nor is it fun to watch.

It's like E.T. with breasts!

Technically there isn’t anything wrong with this game; it plays just like the old games in the Mirra series. It’s the goals that really prove to be frustrating. They simply demand too much of you without giving you neither the means nor the tools to accomplish them in a timely manner. The level designs aren’t very indicative of what the great minds at Z-Axis are capable of either. These levels are very basic and seem to be lacking in design and inspiration. This is an especially stark contrast to the levels that appeared in Aggressive Inline, which were full of fun and imagination.

In terms of goal management, the game pans out much like Activision O2’s Tony Hawk 4. You’ll be able to roam freely though the environments at your own accord while goals are activated by talking to various characters. After approaching a character the game switches to a cut scene which I assume is supposed to layout the impending goal to you. What you really get is a cut scene with a whole lot of swearing and not much else. In fact they do an absolutely abysmal job of setting up your goal for you. When it mercifully ends, you’ll be given a goal and a time limit, that’s it. No direction, no indication of how to accomplish it, nothing. Umm... go find the pimp and bring his poodle back here? And where the hell is this damn poodle that you speak of? Oh that’s right, I’m supposed to be physic right?

As you may have guessed the game plays more of less like Mirra 2, right down to the complicated move sets. I could never get in to the Mirra series of games because I felt like they took a very simplistic concept and over-complicated matters. Games like Mat Hoffman are readily accessible to nearly all audiences because of their simplistic, yet addictive game play. Mirra puts itself out of the reach of newcomers because of the awkward timing and unnecessarily complex control scheme. Much like Mirra 2 the tricks are pretty bland, featuring a trick set that is low on variety and big on modifiers. Do we really need 50 variants of the table top?

Then again, the game play isn’t going to sell horny teenagers on the concept of XXX, the nudity is and boy will they be getting shafted. For starters, the topless riders aren’t available at the onset of the game. You’ll have to win first place in the game’s two competition levels to unlock the feature. Then there’s the whole thing about the implementation of Scores Strippers which is very akin to a bad movie tie-in. Think of it as creative advertising, I think of it as your general run-of-the-mill bait and switch tactic, included in hopes of spurning sales amongst horny teens. What happens is you’ll get some short footage of the Scores Girls doing their job. If you’re looking for some hot wanking material then you’ve come to the wrong place. These videos each last about 20 seconds and generally feature a girl doing some teasing and staring in to the camera. It’s basically like watching Skinemax late at night, except that there’s considerably less nudity here.Visually the game looks like a rushed PS2 port that takes little advantage of the Xbox hardware. The player models are pretty blocky and don’t animate in a particularly lifelike fashion. It seems like a ton of frames of animation were missing and while a tail whip does look like a tail whip, it’s not exactly done in a convincing fashion. The environments themselves are pretty bland and while quite large, leave very much to be desired. As a big bonus though the breast physics are pretty spectacular and are on par with what the horny boys at Tecmo (Dead or Alive) are dishing out. It's really a shame that the women look like men though.

I’d say that the game’s one saving grace lies in the audio department. Keeping on par with the bar that they set for the Mirra and the AI series, BMX XXX features a great soundtrack. The range for it is just astounding, catering to both old school fans of yesteryear and the trendy teens of today. This means you’ll get great tunes like 311’s “Down” and Greenday’s “Basket Case” while your girlfriend will get to listen to more significantly effeminate tunes like Saliva’s “Click Click Boom” and A Newfound Glory’s “My Friends Over You.” Interestingly enough, some of the songs have been censored, removing some explicit lyrics pertaining to drug references in some of the tracks. Keepin’ it dirty this ain’t.

I understand the direction that Z-Axis was trying to go for here but the end result just isn't entertaining. Out of all the "xtreme" games released in the past year I'd say that BMX XXX ranks at the bottom of the barrel. Sure it's got boobs and a great soundtrack but that's about it. The gameplay is pretty weak, the goals are laid out far too poorly and most importantly, the game's just not any fun to play. Hopefully the guys at Z-Axis have been able to exorcise their Jr. High demons, letting them get back to producing quality games like Aggressive Inline.

Breasts, bikes and crude sexual humor, that sounds like a fail proof formula to me, yet somehow, Z-Axisâ€™ last Acclaim commissioned title does just that, managing to snatch failure from the jaws of success.

Rating: 5.4 Flawed

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.

About Author

Gaming has been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. I can still recall many a lost nights spent playing Gyromite with that stupid robot contraption for the old NES. While I'm not as old as the rest of the crew around these parts, I still have a solid understanding of the heritage and the history of the video gaming industry.

It's funny, when I see other people reference games like Doom as "old-school" I almost begin to cringe. I bet that half of these supposed "old-school" gamers don't even remember classic games like Rise of the Triad and Commander Keen. How about Halloween Harry? Does anyone even remember the term "shareware" anymore? If you want to know "old-school" just talk to John. He'll tell you all about his favorite Atari game, Custer's Revenge.

It's okay though, ignorance is bliss and what the kids don't know won't hurt them. I'll just simply smile and nod the next time someone tells me that the best entry in the Final Fantasy franchise was Final Fantasy VII.

When I'm not playing games I'm usually busy sleeping through classes at a boring college in Southern Oregon. My current hobbies are: writing songs for punk rock bands that never quite make it, and teasing Bart about... well just teasing Bart in general. I swear the material writes itself when you're around this guy. He gives new meaning to the term "moving punching bag."

As for games, I enjoy all types except those long-winded turn-based strategy games. I send those games to my good pal Tyler, I hear he has a thing for those games that none of us actually have the time to play.

When I'm not busy plowing through a massive pile of video games I spend all of my time trying to keep my cute little girl fed. She eats a ton but damn she's so hot. Does anyone understand the Asian girl weight principal? Like they'll clean out your fridge yet still weigh less than 110 pounds.